Game Of Thrones: What To Make Of The Stark Reunion Hype?

The premiere of Game of Thrones Season 7 is just around the corner, and there’s a lot of excitement surrounding the prospect of a Stark family reunion. But can we really expect all four of them to actually be in the same place at the same time, let alone get along swimmingly?

Anticipation of this reunion hit a high-water mark in May, when Entertainment Weekly published an extensive photoshoot featuring all four surviving Stark children together – Jon (Kit Harington), Sansa (Sophie Turner), Arya (Maisie Williams) and Bran (Isaac Hempstead Wright). During your internet travels, you probably saw the image below, showing all of them smiling and laughing and generally seeming to have a pretty swell time.

Sansa’s voiceover in the most recent trailer for Season 7 also seems to underscore the idea that we’ll see a fiercely loyal and devoted relationship between the surviving Starks in the coming episodes: “When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives."

Fans have come up with a whole bunch of interpretations of this line, but the consensus explanation seems to be the most correct one. They’re still on the same team, no matter how many times Turner seems to sow doubts about Sansa’s relationship with Jon in recent interviews. She told Variety this week, “There’s a certain level where she doesn’t feel like she’s been recognized for the fact that she effectively saved everyone’s asses and kind of saved the day in the Battle of the Bastards.” Jon's not a power-hungry guy and Sansa will see that soon enough (if she doesn't already), so it's unlikely this tension between them will last.

While the idea that Sansa’s going to fall for another one of Littlefinger’s schemes seems like a red herring at this stage – he gave her to Ramsay Bolton, for heaven's sake – it’s not entirely clear how much time Season 7 will allow for all the Starks to be in the same place, as much as we’d love to see it.

For starters, Jon and Sansa have no idea as to the whereabouts of either Arya or Bran. They don’t know either of them are still alive, let alone heading to Winterfell. We can assume from snippets of the official Season 7 trailers that Bran eventually makes it home, but it's too early to say if Arya’s planning to cross a few more names off her kill list as she journeys north from The Twins.

via GIPHY

It's also looking like Jon will be quite the busy boy this season, as the newly minted KingindaNorf. We know from the trailers that he returns north of the Wall, yet it would also make sense if he had to venture south at some point soon to forge some kind of alliance with either Cersei (unlikely) or Dany. Hell, he might even have to go visit Oldtown to interrupt Gilly and Sam’s Azor Ahai book club for some reason. With Sansa more than capable of minding the store at Winterfell, there are plenty of reasons to believe Jon won’t be sitting around waiting for a sibling surprise he doesn’t even know to expect.

A recent interview with Harington seems to lend credence to the idea Jon could be out of the loop if and when the band gets back together in Season 7. "If a Stark reunion ever were to happen, I think it would be bittersweet," the actor told The Hollywood Reporter. "All of them have been in so many different places and done so many different things. Bran is the Three-Eyed Raven, Arya is an assassin, Sansa has been bandied about by Littlefinger and Ramsay and Joffrey; not the best taste in gentlemen. I don't know that it would be exactly what everyone wants."

That’s a whole other can of worms, right there. Every one of the surviving Starks has changed dramatically since they last saw one another in Season 1, before Ned left to become Hand of the King to Robert Baratheon. Sansa and Arya never got along especially well; will the tensions between them dissipate or get worse after their long separation? Will everyone think Bran’s gone cuckoo for cocoa puffs now that he's calling himself the Three-Eyed Raven and speaking to trees? If Bran reveals the bombshell about Jon’s true parentage, how will Sansa and Arya react?

We’ll start to get some answers when Game of Thrones Season 7 finally begins this Sunday, July 16, at 9.p.m.

Do you think we’ll see a full-on Stark reunion in Season 7? Feel free to chat all things Game of Thrones in the comments below.